Nourishment for the Body and Mind

We're standing in the drizzle waiting for a bus downtown when three young lads call out to us. They ask us where we're from, and when we say, "Canada," one boy, in particular, is thrilled. His uncle lives in Canada. Of course each boy must take a picture of us with his cell phone before we go our separate ways.

The purpose for our outing is to go the the Gwangju main bus terminal's XP Books store. This place, with a reasonably sized English book section, is very stylish and upscale, not at all your typical downtown bus depot. Rob picks up an extremely dense, difficult to decipher, academic text called The New Horizon to Ancient Korean History. As we say, reading it will be, "heavy sledding." I choose the 2008 Man Booker Prize winner, The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga. It's about social and economic injustice and globalization as depicted through one man's story.

I've been wanting to read this book ever since the author received his controversial award. The literati, though admitting Adiga is a huge talent, thought it unseemly that a first time novelist should win such a prestigeous award. This literary prize for fiction is given each year for the best original full-length novel written in the English language by a citizen of The Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. Past winners have included Michael Ondaatje, Arundhati Roy, and Margaret Atwood. As promised, The White Tiger is a page turner; I have to force myself to put it down.

At noon, Diane hosts a goodbye lunch for SharaLee and we're invited along with Ryan, Karl, and Krishad, a young exchange student from the Bahamas, via Delaware State University. The pork rib barbeque includes toasted corn, and a couple of dozen other dishes. It's the ultimate Korean send-off, and SharaLee is touched.

Once again, it's interesting to me how very little Koreans drink with their meals. Often, it's no more than a quick glass of water at the end. Today, we splurge and the table of seven shares three small bottles of pop. In North America, each person has a 20 - 32 ounce glass of their own, and often has refills! After we eat, Rob and I give SharaLee a little travel pack of provisions for the journey. It's filled with Korean goodies, like shortbread mushroom shaped cookies with chocolate, veggie chips, and fragrant gum.

This lunchtime get-together is the first time I've had much of a chance to talk with Krishad, and I feel for the kid. He's finding being black to be a bit of a challenge here. People stare at him, and sometimes act strange, and understandly, this hurts his feelings. I explain that people do the same to us, because we look different than them, but that's cold comfort to a young man who is alone, and far, far from home. I think of how I might feel at that age, and on my own. I feel very lucky to be travelling with my sensible old shoe, my lovable old black lab, my pati-dev, Rob. Every day someone comments on how well-suited we are to one another, and I must agree. When I say to Diane, yes, we're both slightly off, so we fit, she replies, "Even a straw shoe has a mate!"

We get some very good news in the afternoon. We learn that we can stay in our apartment for another week, and at no charge! This saves us seven nights of hotel bills, which allows us to comfortably cover the thank you dinners we've been hosting. Once again, the Lord provides! It's an embarassment of riches.

In the evening, Sue invites us to dinner with SharaLee. We have an outrageouly delicious and nutritious cold soup. Rob's "mae mil meung myeon" has buckwheat noodles and my "chik neung myeon" has arrowroot noodles. These soups are sweet and vinegary, and they contain slices of pear. Our table gets a free mountain of grilled pork for ordering the soups.

Slim, gorgeous Sue receives her soup and uses scissors to slice the noodles and mix the ingredients at warp speed. She inhales everything, and then orders more noodles! We are incredulous as she downs those at the same speed. Let's get this straight: Sue is young, beautiful, smart, speaks a couple of languages fluently, has a rich, rolling, laugh that erupts through her body, can sing like a bird, eat like a horse, and stay slender. She's nice too. It just isn't fair.

In the evening, Rob and I walk to a neighbourhood outside our gate, and in the opposite direction of Hu Moon. We find an entirely different crowd of young, less hip, Koreans, and average families. We pick up a couple of bags of fruit, and when Rob hands his soju to the middle-aged cashier, she laughs aloud. This must be quite the scene for this traditional Korean shopkeeper, because most Westerners hate soju. Rob has grown rather fond of it, and this is a guy who has a drink, maybe, twice a year.

We read ourselves to sleep, to dream of tomorrow's trek up Mudeung-san.